Video Game Addiction

I used to play Halo 3 a TON. You could say I was addicted. I played from right when I got home from school until about 9pm and then picked it up around 12am and played until 3am. I was completely addicted to the game. I say that I have played about 10,000 matches in my lifetime of Halo. With each match being about 10 minutes, thats about 69 played days of video games. I never even realized. By now, I've stopped playing games so that statistic was over a period of 3 years! Maybe I'm not as addicted as other people on other games, but MY addiction got in the way of my progress with things more important to me. When I started playing, I began to put off my homework and studying for tests. I had already been procrastinating so I procrastinated even more after I started playing Halo. It had even run into my piano practice time so I had to really crack down and practice about 3 hours per day over the last 3 weeks before my big auditions that year! I began to be secluded from my family and my friends. Sometimes, I rejected an invitation to hang out with friends just so I could play Halo alone.

What is so addicting about Halo? Well in Halo 3, there is a ranking system based on player skill, rather than on time. For example, in Call of Duty, a player gets points for every game played and after a certain number of points, he ranks up a level. But Halo 3 has a different ranking system in which skill level cannot be improved by just sheer play time. In Halo 3, one must be good and win a certain number of matches in a row to prove to the system that he is good enough to be given the next skill level number. In Halo 3, the highest skill level possible was 50, and I was not going to stop playing until I got there. Eventually, after years of playing, I got good enough to be a level 50 but the game was still addicting. Maybe it's because it makes me feel successful and good about myself when I win a game and I have a positive kill-death spread. Maybe it's because it makes me feel good when I beat another team of players. Maybe I like the team-oriented aspect of the game, which must be seen by all team members to truly succeed consistently. Maybe I kept playing because I wanted to achieve the status of being the highest level because I HAD to be the best in everything that I do.

Halo really took its toll on me. I used to be ranked #1 in high school, but because of Halo, I made a low A in U.S. History and eventually that came to bite me in the rear because I graduated as the Salutatorian, #2. It also hindered my piano development and if I had not played Halo, I probably would be a lot further in my piano education. Playing Halo might have made me less social as well. I might have only learned to communicate to people online rather than people in real life. I have always been a shy person, and Halo only decreased my development when it came to that. I stopped playing Halo cold turkey at the beginning of my freshman year of college because my Xbox was left to my little brother at home. I can tell a huge difference in my life. I study a ton more than I would if I still played. I have joined a fraternity to increase my social life and to develop contacts for future jobs and whatnot. I have become more active physically rather than just sitting there playing Halo. Overall, playing video games and being addicted to Halo hindered me, and now that I've stopped playing, I have become more successful and healthy in things I wish to achieve.